A continuing challenge to modern society is to improve methods and apparatuses for information transfer. Particular challenges are associated with communication transfer. For purposes of interpreting this document and the claims that follow, the term “communication” is defined to encompass information which is passed from one human to another. Communications can be, for example, in the form of textual and/or graphic representations.
Several mechanisms are presently available for passing textual and/or graphical information from one human to another. Such mechanisms include large-scale distribution mechanisms, such as, for example, publication of books, newspapers and periodicals. Communications can also be formed and transferred by office equipment, such as with fax machines and copiers. Fax machines and copiers reproduce a hard copy of a communication, and, in the case of the fax machine, transmit an electronic version of the hard copy to a distant location prior to reproduction of the hard copy. Other mechanisms for distributing communications include electronic mail (e-mail) and network communications. A network which is achieving increasing popularity is the global Internet, which is a network extending across countries in both hemispheres of the globe. The World Wide Web (the Web) is a portion of the global Internet having hypertext-enabled pieces of information. The information on the web is communicated in many formats, including multimedia formats (such as video and audio information), as well as textual and graphical formats. Information on the web is provided with an address, such as, for example, a uniform resource location (URL), which can be utilized to locate the information on the web.
A difficulty with all of the above-described mechanisms for passing communications between persons is that it can be difficult, and frequently impossible, for a person receiving the communication to know if the particular communication is a most recently updated version of the communication or if there is a more updated version available. Another difficulty can be that if a person only receives a portion of a communication, it can be difficult, and frequently impossible, to find the rest of the communication. It would be desirable to develop methodologies and mechanisms which overcome the above-discussed limitations associated with present methods of communication transfer.